


Marigold

by Seralyn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Magical! Dursley, Original Character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29301708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seralyn/pseuds/Seralyn
Summary: “I am Marigold Marjorie Dursley,” she told the court, her throat growing dry as if she had not drank water in some time. Beneath the stares of  the assembled members of the Wizengamot she felt as if she were shrinking. They had asked her a few times for her name before she managed to mumble it out. In the corner she saw her neighbor, who was apparently a squib, and her headmaster who was staring at her with such intensity that she felt raw.Maggie Dursley, estranged daughter of proud muggles Vernon and Petunia Dursley, braves her fourth year at Hogwarts. The year is 1995 and the world she has come to know in the last four years is rapidly changing.
Kudos: 4





	Marigold

**“F** reak,” her brother whispers, shouting over the blare of the telly. His eyes, the same watery blue hue that belonged to their mother, narrow with their usual amount of disgust and loathing. It is the same look he’d been bestowing upon her for the last three summers when he could tolerate being in her presence for long enough. The lull of food had drawn him to the table and Maggie refused to leave her dining room. She was not dangerous, except if you happened to be a tea kettle. Her family was non-magical and they regarded her magicalness as an inherently malevolent mutation, “why can’t you and Harry just stay there?” 

Maggie swallowed the last bite of her cereal, ignoring his question. If she could have stayed there she would have, and she supposed Harry would’ve too. Privet Drive was volatile and stagnant in a way that was driving her slowly mad. Wordlessly, she stood and placed her dish into the sink. She ascended the stairs and tried to not look at her mother’s closed bedroom door, but her eyes always fell upon it. It was from her that Maggie probably got the mutation. It was her sister that was the witch, not that her mother ever wanted to admit it aloud. 

Her bedroom at the end of the hall has not changed since the day she left for Hogwarts. Its stubbornly pink walls and posters of famous footballers and pop stars are waiting for the ten-year-old Muggle Marguerite to return from St. Angus’ Primary School. She flopped onto her frilly bed sheets and slammed her eyes shut, picturing instead the lofty roof of the Ravenclaw tower. If she concentrated for long enough she could hear the breezes that billowed through the windows in the late spring. She slept the best curled underneath the blue and bronze quilts. The illusion lasted for only moments. The room was too still and stifling to be the Ravenclaw tower. Instead, she went to her too white desk with the horse figurines that still rested proudly on the hutch and began to pen her fourth desperate plea for information. This time she decided to write her oldest and only other Muggle-born friend, Cora Bennett.

Dear Cora,

It’s me, Maggie, again. I just received your last letter about your trip to France. Paris sounds absolutely lovely. But to be absolutely frank, I need to know what is going on in the wizarding world. I know that you’re in a Muggle household, but I know that you subscribe to the Daily Prophet. There must be something reported about You-Know-Who. Please, Cora. I need to know something. Looking forward to hearing from you again soon.

Yours,

Maggie 

She debated adding a P.S. telling Cora to not bother with responding if she wasn’t going to tell her anything. For whatever reason, her friends were being unusually mum about the ongoings of the wizarding world. And from the small number of owls that visited their house, she surmised the same was happening to Harry, her cousin. His tiny room was nestled between hers and the bathroom. At night she’d hear him screaming and though it was muffled, she could tell he was crying out for Cedric Diggory, the seventh-year Hufflepuff who was murdered. For as long as she lived, Maggie did not think she’d ever scrub that image cleaned from her head.  _ Go talk to him _ . A brave voice would tell her, on the nights she stood outside of his door. But Maggie Dursley was not brave.  _ Not much courage in you, child _ , the old hat had crooned in her head _ , but you do have a strong mind.  _

She wrote three more letters. Each more scathing than the one she sent to Cora. Her three other good friends, Hanneli, Afia, and Georgie all came from wizarding homes. Their letters had been far and few between and also so carefully censored. They spoke of the terrible tragedy from last year and little else.

“Maggie?” It was her mother. Petunia Evans Dursley stood hunched in her doorway. Her hair was unwashed and stingy. It draped on the sides of her face uncombed and not colored. The sight of her made Maggie want to sink into her carpet. She knew her mother kept up with her appearance when she wasn’t home. She’s seen pictures of the three of them, the perfect little family. Maggie turned her chair to face her, realizing then that her mother was not going to cross the threshold of her room, “Gemma’s mother called. Your friends are getting together at six,”

Friends was a generous term. Forced summer companions would be something better to call her and the girls she hung out with at St. Angus’s. They were under the impression that she was attending some elite Finnish boarding school. Gemma and Haley and Marie used to ask her questions but her lack of answers about the hot Finnish boys tampered their interest. They spoke about football games and French class and chemistry and algebra. All things Maggie could no longer relate to but for her mother’s sake, she got ready for the evening. 

***

She lasted for nearly two hours before the mundane chatter forced her to leave. The others seemed not to notice, they were engrossed with Haley’s tales about the older boy she was dating. Maggie jumped from the Johson’s porch nearly tumbling into the grass. For a fleeting moment, she could pretend she was flying. She played sometimes as a reserve Chaser and enjoyed flying at practices. 

“I am a witch,” she whispered into the still air, “I MarigoldMajorie Dursley am a witch!” 

The proclamation onto her Muggle town made her elated. She promised herself she’d never return to Gemma’s again. They were the friends of her old world. Her old world where everything was orderly and she was Daddy’s Princess and Mummy’s angel. The ones filled with big birthday celebrations and Christmas gifts. The one where her mum could stomach looking at her. The one where Harry was the outsider. The one where she too belonged as a Dursley, as a Muggle. The old world was tucked into her heart, aching, and throbbing. Her new world, her magical world, was slowly ebbing away at that hurt. She dreamed of one day becoming a Prefect and maybe going to work in the Ministry. She dreamed of marrying Wyatt Agustin, the now seventh-year who had helped her onto platform 9 ¾ her first year. She had only tried out for the Quidditch team to spend time with him without being too suspicious. 

In her musings, she at first did not notice the odd darkening of the streets around her. The stars disappeared into the fog that was hugging St. James Park. The air became crisper, rising the hair on her exposed arms and spreading goosebumps. Dementors. The loathsome creatures that haunted her second year of school and her nightmares. She fumbled for her wand, her fingers wrapping around it and tugging it free. Some things spilled from her bag but she didn’t even look for what was now rolling away.

What spell could she use? She had never learned the spell to dispel them. Harry knew it. She’d seen him use it at the Quidditch match. Why hadn’t she asked him? In her frightened mind, she could not think of the terms for any of the spells. She would be hopeless. They’d kiss her and the muggles would find her wandering around soulless and lock her away in an institution. Her feet, fortunately, had more sense than her brain and they were walking home. Walking home to Harry, to safety. She had never been so happy to see home. 

“What the bloody hell are you doing with that thing out? Have you lost your mind?” Her father bellowed, “she’s got her wand! Did the other girls see you? Did anyone see you?”

She shoved her wand roughly back into her bag. The damage was already done and they began their tirade. Each jab piercing and opening the same wounds the dementors made her re-live. But this time she was not eleven or twelve. She was fourteen and a witch about to start her mid-year of education. 

“Be QUIET!” she shouted, “BE QUIET FOR ONE MINUTE. IS HARRY HOME?” 

Their dubious expressions told her that they had no idea. She climbed the first steps, stopping on the landing and yelled up for him. Hearing nothing meant he was out somewhere. She slipped past her parents and peered into the kitchen for Dudley. 

“Is Dudley out too?” She pulled out the curtains and observed that the stars were still missing, “No...no...no,”

Her parents seemed not to notice her agitation and began yelling again about appearances and how she was not allowed to do magic outside of school anyways. Her ears were only picking up bits, everything else was trying to think of what to do. She’d be no help if she went out there. What if they came here? Why were Dementors in Little Whinging? They should be back in Azkaban. That was what Flitwick had told her, had promised when he found her alone on a sixth-floor corridor. She’d been coming to tell him that she wouldn’t come back. She could not spend another year listening to her parents’ yelling about her. The slamming of that damn door. 

“Oh my! Dudley!” Across the lawn, Harry was stumbling supporting Dudley who was sluggishly moving his legs along. Beside them was Ms. Figg, the crazy cat lady. Why was she here? Maggie stared at her as she took Dudley’s other arm and tried to hasten his steps. Petunia was shrieking at the sight of her “Duddy-kins”. Her shrieking did not make him walk faster and it did not stop him from puking on the welcome mat. Maggie carefully stepped over the mat and into the house. She didn’t need Harry to explain that they’d encountered dementors and that Dudley had experienced the effects of your happiness being sapped from the very essence of your soul. Once Dudley was sitting on the armchair, she went to the cabinet to get the bit of chocolate her mother hid in her sewing box. She thrust it at him, “please eat it. It’ll help you feel better,”

It took a few hours but the color slowly ebbed back into Dudley’s face. He still had not said much at all and he let their parents tuck him into bed. Something they had not done in a very long time. Their parents waited in his room until he fell asleep. They said nothing to her as they walked into their room though she caught her mother’s eye as she closed the door. She wondered if they’d come tuck her in if she asked. But she could only wonder as her mouth remained shut. 

“Harry?” 

He’d been expelled. Then unexpelled. Then scheduled for a disciplinary hearing. There were dementors in Little Whinging. It was all too much. Her ears had been ringing for hours only adding to the pounding sensation forming in the middle of her forehead. She stepped into his bedroom to be met by red rimmed eyes that flared dangerously. 

“I’m not going to ask if you’re alright. But what the bloody hell?” 

From beneath the fringe of his messy hair and behind his glasses, red-rimmed eyes met her face. Her only answer was a non-committed shrug. She could not walk away. Not at this moment. They had never been true friends or cousins or siblings. He was the boy who lived under the stairs. The freak nephew whose parents were drunkards and freeloaders, who went and got themselves killed. That was all she knew. All she believed. Dudley liked to push his head into toilets and she made comments dismissing their connection and even disavowing their blood relation when it was discovered he was a wizard. She could remember the tiny hut. Its greyness and how cold it was. She watched from the doorway of her parents’ bedroom as a tail sprouted from Dudley’s behind. Of how a giant nearly broke down their door. The same giant who was her teacher now.

She blamed him when she got her letter. It must have somehow been through association that she got magic from him. He’d rubbed off on her. How foolish and ridiculous she’d been. Magic could not be rubbed off. It was in her blood. And all she could think about was the times she accidentally caused something to happen only for Harry to be blamed.

“They can’t possibly expel you. You  _ had  _ to save yourself and Dudley,” He had no other furniture than his bed and she did not think she’d be welcomed to sit on it. She sat in the middle of his bare room, crossing her legs to warm her cold toes, “I-..,”

She had been told that she was oblivious sometimes. She could recite all the medical uses of dragon’s blood, but, sometimes could not tell if someone was truly upset or angry or flirting. Her mouth moved at its own pace, jumping from topic to topic. Silence unsettled her.

“What do you hear when the dementors come near you?”

The question surprised her and she drew her knees protectively to her chest. It did not abate the bitterness that was settling in her stomach or the tears forming in her eyes. Staring at the cracks in the walls, she answered, “I hear different things...you remember how I spent months as a statue in my first year?” She’d been the third person to be petrified. She made the mistake of following Ginny Weasley to the bathroom, hearing the odd hissing and mistakenly believing that the girl was in grave danger, “I hear the hissing... the parseltongue. Did your friend tell you that we could hear the people in the hospital wing? Madam Pomfrey was telling Professor Flitwick that she had been writing to all of our parents, asking them what they wanted to say to us. My parents did not write anything. They didn’t even write to ask if I’d be alright…,” Her voice was growing softer breaking on the last words, “I hear that and I hear my parents fighting about me,” 

Harry was staring at her, in a way that told her she had maybe overshared. He did not look as if he was about to open his mouth and share what it was those foul creatures dredged up from him. Though she could guess. A handsomely dead Hufflepuff boy came to mind. She involuntarily flashed to the humid night sitting in the stands when they returned. She catapulted upward roaring and cheering, elated that he had won, only to have it dawn upon her that something horrendous had occurred. She was rushed along with the throng of other students away from the Quidditch pitch wishing she was brave enough to disobey and to find her. Her cousin, her blood, her family. 

***

“Hold your horses,” she muttered to no one in particular. It was early Monday morning of her dwindling summer holiday and she was trying to hasten the break by slumbering as much as she could. Her parents and Dudley had been in a right state since returning from their fake lawn ceremony. They had somehow deducted for themselves that it was not a coincidence that Harry had also been whisked away the same night and were very grumpy about it indeed. And they were ignoring her at the moment, having gone out for breakfast without bothering to wake her. 

She yanked open her door to find the last person she ever expected upon her stoop. Her heart plummeted and her mouth went dry. Wyatt Agustin was standing there looking every bit as he did when he graduated Hogwarts last year. Perhaps his hair was a bit shorter, but his eyes were still the same electric blue. She wished to melt into the ground below and hastily crossed her chest wishing she had worn a thicker shirt. 

“Good morning Maggie,” he said, “I hope I did not wake you,”

Rather foolishly she uttered, “you didn’t,” Though it was very obvious that he did. He looked every bit as handsome as she remembered and dreamed of. Words failed her then as she stared at him imploring him to explain his unusual appearance without using any words. He seemed to understand her. 

“I am here on order of Albus Dumbledore to bring you to the ministry,” 

“The ministry?” she repeated as if she had never heard the word before.

“You are to be a witness in Potter’s trial,” And suddenly he was pushing past her and into her foyer and then most incredibly he was heading up the stairs.  _ Wyatt Agustin _ , Quidditch captain and first wizard she had met other than Harry, was ascending her stairs and making his way towards her childish room. That propelled her forward. She managed to reach her doorway before he did, smiling up at him.

“I-I’ll get dressed,”

She had never gone to trial before. Never had known anyone to go to a trial before. The only ones she had seen were on muggle television. What did magic folk wear to trials? She was staring at her closet hoping something out of its mundaneness would catch her attention. She settled upon a blouse and a pencil skirt she could not recall acquiring. When she rejoined him, he barely glanced at her and instead began a lengthy discussion of what was to come and how she was to explain. 

***

“I am Marigold Marjorie Dursley,” she told the court, her throat growing dry as if she had not drank water in some time. Beneath the stares of the assembled members of the Wizengamot she felt as if she were shrinking. They had asked her a few times for her name before she managed to mumble it out. In the corner she saw her neighbor, who was apparently a squib, and her headmaster who was staring at her with such intensity that she felt raw. 

The Minister for Magic, Mr.Fudge, was the first to speak, “and you Miss. Dursley are the defendant’s cousin?”

The question was a simple one and yet her voice stuttered out the answer. Then came the questions asking about her age and her house at Hogwarts. And then they brought up her blood status. Fudge leaning over the podium, his voice angled towards the toadish woman that flanked him on the right. Maggie saw Dumbledore beginning to walk towards them, his mouth opening but she interjected before he could.

“I do not see Minister sir why my status as muggle born is of concern to this matter at all,” her voice was surprisingly firm and grew in octaves, “two years ago under your ill-advised orders, those monsters plagued Hogwarts. I am quite acquainted with the effects that overcome an individual when in their presence,”

Out of the corner of her eye she caught Wyatt smirking. The answer had impressed him and had flabbergasted the Minister who sputtered at her before gathering his wits to reprimand her. She managed to recall the events of night in question without stammering and her eyes never left the minister’s face. Each of her answers were countered with implications of familial loyalty but she tried her best to avow them of no such thing bringing forth her brother, the muggle, who’d experienced the effects without seeing the dementors at all. She was dismissed unsure if she had helped matters at all but she followed behind Wyatt out of the courtroom and into the hallway. 

“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,” Wyatt was saying as they entered into the atrium of the base floor of the Ministry. Ministry workers in varying shades of robes were bustling by, returning from their lunch break and the noise of their bustling was becoming numbing and overwhelming, “that was incredible!”

“Th-thank you,” Any sense of bravado was faltering then. Had she made herself to be an enemy to the ministry? Would her name go into some sort of system baring her from any sort of employment there? She had not given much thought to what she’d do outside of Hogwarts, allowing herself to never think of herself as anything else but a student wizard.

Wyatt paused watching as her face took on a pallid color. She suddenly looked very reminiscent of the first year student he had found cowering behind her trunk. His mother had spotted the trunk first and pushed him towards it.  _ What if they have questions about Hogwarts _ ? His mother had prodded,  _ I can’t answer any of those _ . She was shaking then too, biting upon the lower lip, dark eyes not really focusing upon anything at all. He used the same light airy voice he used to cajole Sarah, his younger sister, into doing as he pleased. No one was as officious or as stubborn as Sarah, so the voice worked, allowing him to help her to feet and through the barrier. She had been his shadow since. An annoying shadow in the same essence as Sarah would have been had she gone to Hogwarts.

“Maggie?” he reached out trying his best not to startle her but she jumped anyways, “come on we’re going to leave,” 

“Do we have to apparate again?” She was an owl then blinking madly at him. She had assured him that she had side-apparated before and loathed it. 

“No we can walk or take the tube or a bus-

“You know how to take the tube or the bus?” 

“My mother is a squib,” he said evenly. 

“Oh,” was all she said. 

***

The delipted house he brought her to after a lengthy tube ride was not what she was expecting at all. Despite his certainty that he knew how to navigate the tube, it was Maggie who had to assist them with their final destination. 

“Where-

He put a finger to his lips as he brought her into a long old corridor. The house was of dark wood quality that made her feel bumps rising on her skin. Emerging from the first door on her left was her old professor, Mad-Eye Moody. His whirling eye found her immediately and she found herself straightening up underneath its intense glare. He lumbered towards them, his cane pounding with each step and he introduced himself.

“Oh we’ve already met…,” and then Maggie wanted to smack herself or become one with the dusty hole ridden carpet on the floor, “no I met-

“Barty Crouch junior,” Wyatt cut an edge in his voice. There was no hiding the anger or was it sadness contained in his face. He had been laughing before and full of the smiles she adored. Without explanation he bid them farewell and stormed out of the door. The door at the end of the hall opened widely then, a plump kind red headed woman peaked her head out. She was familiar and she saw Maggie, and there was such lightness in those eyes. 

“You must be Maggie, I’m Molly,” she said, “welcome, welcome,” 

  
  



End file.
